From My Life

4.

My wife, back when I had a wife, was a doozie. She’d stick with me through thin (as she said), but as soon as thick came along and I was well enough to be left alone—to my own devices, so to speak—she’d be off somewhere: taking a round-the-world cruise with her sister, sending back emails from exotic ports of call (Antwerp, Oran, Aden, and so on), always asking why I never bothered to answer her messages, email her back. As I never had an answer to that or any of her other questions (“Are you eating well?” “Are you getting enough sleep?” “Are you remembering to water the plants?”), I’d just hit delete. Irene was her name, as I recall.